The present invention relates to telecommunication networks and more particularly to operations architectures for supporting various aspects of a telecommunication network.
Many services are offered by local service providers. Such services include, but are not limited to, telephone services, internet services, home shopping services, etc. Often, a local service provider does not offer expanded services, i.e., services out of their service area. Thus, customers are forced to rely on larger, i.e., national and/or international, service providers for services provided outside the service area of the local in service provider. For example, many local telephone service providers do not offer long distance service. Customers of the local providers rely on long distance companies for long distance telephone service. However, several problems are inherent when offering services through a secondary provider. One such problem is that the integration of services between the two providers is not streamlined, creating connection problems such as intermittent service and sometimes even total failure of the service. Other such problems include validating that a service is authorized or that it has been cancelled or revoked. Further, larger service providers often must rely on the local service providers to collect payment for the services rendered by the larger service providers.
Many of the larger service providers offer similar or the same services to customers of local service providers while simultaneously providing expanded services to the customers of the local service providers. This gives customers the option to choose alternate, and often more reliable, service. However, a larger service provider often is limited to utilizing the systems of the local service providers. For example, a large telephone company could offer localized services to customers but would have to utilize the existing wiring of the local telephone company in order to avoid the high cost of installing wiring between the customer and the large telephone company. Thus, the larger service provider is left at the mercy of the local service providers through which to its services are offered, and which are often hostile to the larger service provider attempting to enter xe2x80x9ctheirxe2x80x9d market.
The local service providers have seen their operational cost structure for supporting interfaces with retail providers increase significantly. The inability to automate order flow-through, including order management and gateway capabilities, is a leading reason for the high operational costs. The implementation of ordering guidelines requires solutions that can be configured by service type, by product, by interface, and by exception condition. The cost of erred orders and corrections, or fallout, often exceeds lifetime wholesale revenue of the end-customer by several hundred percent. Most solutions do not deal with fallout, especially at the service request level.
In order to provide an interconnect solution to the above problem, certain system capabilities must be addressed. These capabilities include providing a centralized rule based repository for analysis, configuration, sharing, and implementation of order (service request) logic. Also, establishing a flexible, configurable platform to support ongoing changes in standards, interfaces, processes, and service levels at low costs is essential. The system must further integrate disparate platforms and applications with common messaging structured, data, and processing architectures.
It can be seen that there is a need for an operations architecture for supporting various aspects of a telecommunication system.
It can also be seen that there is a need for an operations architecture to automate order flow-through including order management and gateway capabilities.
To overcome the limitations in the prior art described above, and to overcome other limitations that will become apparent upon reading and understanding the present specification, the present invention generally discloses an operations architecture for supporting various aspects of a telecommunication system, and more particularly describes an operations architecture to automate order flow-through including order management and gateway capabilities.
The present invention solves the above-described problems by providing an operations architecture for supporting various aspects of a telecommunication system. A system, method and article of manufacture are provided for affording an operations architecture to implement a local service activation management system. A physical environment is provided for supporting a local service activation management system. The physical environment is managed with managing hardware which is in turn supported by support infrastructure. Further, a common integration platform is implemented. In use, operation management procedures are executed such as disaster recovery, scheduled maintenance, roll outs and release, production control, toolset procedures, service level agreement generation, operations level agreement generation, and service level reporting.
Another embodiment of the system in accordance with the principles of the invention may include alternate or optional additional aspects. One such aspect is that the managing hardware includes management servers, management controllers, management consoles, probes, and sniffers. Further, the support infrastructure includes start-up tools, shut-down tools and recovery tools.
In another embodiment of the present invention, the integration platform includes common standards, common interfaces, common message formats, and common file logging forms. As an option, multiple application management tools may be provided.
These and various other advantages and features of novelty which characterize the invention are pointed out with particularity in the claims annexed hereto and form a part hereof. However, for a better understanding of the invention, its advantages, and the objects obtained by its use, reference should be made to the drawings which form a further part hereof, and to accompanying descriptive matter, in which there are illustrated and described specific examples of an apparatus in accordance with the invention.